Month after month, the tide of misery flowed on, each wave sweeping deeper into the heart of the province, and carrying off fresh victims of their own benevolence. Unfortunately, just as navigation closed for the season, a vessel arrived full of emigrants from Lord Palmerston's Irish estates. They appear to have been rather a favourable specimen of their class; but they came late, and they came from one of Her Majesty's Ministers, and their coming was taken as a sign that England and England's rulers, in their selfish desire to be rid of their starving and helpless poor, cared nothing for the calamities they were inflicting on the colony. Writing on November 12, Lord Elgin says:-- Fever cases among leading persons in the community here still continue to excite much comment and alarm. This day the Mayor of Montreal died,--a very estimable man, who did much for the immigrants, and to whose firmness and philanthropy we chiefly owe it, that the immigrant sheds here were not tossed into the river by the people of the town during the summer. He has fallen a victim to his zeal on behalf of the poor plague-stricken strangers, having died of ship-fever caught at the sheds. Colonel Calvert is lying dangerously ill at Quebec, his life despaired of. Meanwhile, great indignation is aroused by the arrival of vessels from Ireland, with additional cargoes of immigrants, some in a very sickly state, after our Quarantine Station is shut up for the season. Unfortunately the last arrived brings out Lord Palmerston's tenants. I send the commentaries on this contained in this day's newspapers.[6] [Sidenote: The flood subsides.] From this time, however, the waters began to subside. The Irish famine had worked its own sad cure. In compliance with the urgent representations of the Governor, the mother-country took upon herself all the expenses that had been incurred by the colony on behalf of the immigrants of 1847; and improved regulations respecting emigration offer ground for hope that the fair stream, which ought to be full of life and health both to the colony and to the parent state, will not again be choked and polluted, and its plague-stricken waters turned into blood. [Sidenote: Visit to Upper Canada.] In the autumn of this year Lord Elgin paid his first visit to Upper Canada, meeting everywhere with a reception which he felt to be 'most gratifying and 'ncouraging;' and keenly enjoying both the natural beauties of the country and the tokens of its prosperity which met his view. From Niagara he wrote to Mr. Cumming Bruce:-- [Sidenote: Niagara.]